Business and management tips for successful entrepreneurs

Top 25 Open Source Project Management Apps

Published by Madison on Wed April 28, 2010

If you are a project manager or if you plan to become one — or even if you cannot manage your personal day-to-day tasks — you might require some help from a software system designed to simplify and streamline any project or multiple projects. To help you keep your projects within budget, we’ve gathered a list of the top 25 Open Source project management apps on the market now. “Open Source” means that the apps are free to use, and that you can tweak the code to your advantage if you so desire.

This list of the top 25 Open Source project management apps offers a wide variety of software tools, from those that provide simplicity for personal projects to complicated disaster-management software systems. Each link is listed alphabetically, and the link leads to the software site where you can download the apps to try them out.

Achievo resource management capabilities include project management, a scheduler and time registration in 20 languages. No license fees or other limitations on use of the software.

ClockingIT is a free hosted application that keeps track of all your tasks and the time you spend on them. Uses Ajax, Comet and drag and drop technology to keep track of one or several projects.

Collabtive is a Web-based project management software that strives to provide an Open Source alternative to proprietary tools like Basecamp or ActiveCollab.

dotProject is a web-based project management application, designed to provide project layout and control functions. dotProject aims to provide the project manager with a tool to manage tasks, schedules, communication and sharing.

eGroupWare is a groupware software intended for a wide range of business sizes. Manage contacts, appointments, projects and to-do lists. It is used either via its native Web-interface or by using different supported groupware clients.

faces is a self-described “Swiss Army Knife for Project Managers,” a flexible, automated, calculating, extensible and simulating tool based on Python and easy to learn.

GanttProject is a cross-platform desktop tool for project scheduling and management. It runs on Windows, Linux and MacOSX, it is free and its code is Open Source.

KForge provides a complete Web interface for review and administration of project members and services, as well as a fully-developed plugin system so that new kinds of services can be added easily.

Memoranda is an open source cross-platform diary manager and a tool for scheduling personal projects. Memoranda is intended for those people whose daily work is shared between a few different projects, and helps individuals stay on top of personal tasks as well.

Open Workbench is an open source desktop application that provides robust project scheduling and management functionality. Already the scheduling standard for more than 100,000 project managers worldwide, Open Workbench is a free and powerful alternative to Microsoft Project.

phpCollab is an open source internet-enabled system for use in projects that require collaboration over the Internet. Organizations such as consulting firms that rely on a division between firm-side and client-side information will benefit most from use of phpCollab.

phpEasyProject is an Open Source project management system primarily focused toward middle-class businesses from independent and small businesses to the service provider.

Project HQ is a collaborative open source project management tool, similar to Basecamp and activeCollab. It is built on technologies such as Python, Pylons and SQLAlchemy and is fully database independent.

]project-open[ is a web-based “Enterprise Project Management” software for project-based organizations with 2-200 users. ]po[ integrates areas such as CRM, sales, project planning, project tracking, collaboration, time sheet, invoicing and payments, and is one of the most popular project management tools in Germany.

Projectivity is an Open Source Enterprise Management Platform combining unique tools for portfolio, project and knowledge management and collaboration. It uses Frameworks to turn the platform into a specific application, so you can make this app work for you.

Projectory is an open source, platform-independent, Web-enabled project management tool designed to track software projects through all phases of development. Projectory lets you track actual development effort expended by teams or individuals across multiple projects and activities.

ProjectPier is a self-hosted PHP application for managing tasks, projects and teams through an intuitive Web interface. ProjectPier is similar to commercial groupware/project management products, but allows the freedom and scalability of self-hosting.

ProjectVia.net is highly customizable project management environment, capable of simultaneously managing several projects. It is a Web-based project management and collaboration support system based on JCorporate Expresso framework.

Redmine is written with Ruby on Rails framework, and provides a cross-platform and cross-database foundation that tracks networking issues, capacity planning, trouble tickets and more. It includes calendar and Gantt charts to aid visual representation for projects and deadlines.

Sahana is a Free and Open Source Disaster Management system. It is a web based collaboration tool that addresses the common coordination problems during a disaster from finding missing people, managing aid, managing volunteers, tracking camps effectively between Government groups, the civil society (NGOs) and the victims themselves.

TaskJuggler is a modern and powerful Open Source project management tool. Its new approach to project planing and tracking is more flexible to the commonly used Gantt chart editing tools and scales easily to projects with hundreds of resources and thousands of tasks.

Todoyu is a Web 2.0 project and task management application that features project management, time tracking, team organizing, task distribution, resource management, calendar and a client interface.

WebCollab is a collaborative web-based system for projects and project management. The software is ideally suited to tracking multiple projects and innumerable small tasks across an organization of any size.